Developing non-Chemical Flow Assurance Strategies for Petroleum Production Systems

The challenge for flow assurance always arise in deepwater field development, thermal
insulation system become concern in order to prepare for the worst due to tendency of
hydrate and paraffin crystal formation which leads to blockage risk. Wax formation,
hydrate formation, paraffin formation, aspalthenes formation, scale formation and others
is common issues in oil and gas industries. Haunted with these challenges while
balancing opex, capex and risk of uncertainty, non-chemical flow assurance risks
management strategies can be the right solution instead of using conventional chemical
solution.
Specific field favors passive techniques to retain heat such as wet insulation, dry
insulation, flowline burial, flexible pipe and combined method. There are also field that
not compatible with this techniques which require active heating system like coiled
tubing, electric heating and hot fluid circulation. By using this two techniques which is
non-chemical, it is a step forward reducing and even eliminating the use of chemical
inhibitors injection which require topside facilities preparation where not all having
enough space and even costly. Besides, it also can reduce safety issues when dealing
with the chemical inhibitors.
This project will focus on the available passive type of non-chemical flow assurance by
using of thermal insulation concept. Evaluation about the appropriate methods trough
out research from some research papers will be included to highlight the efficiency of
the method mentioned. A hypothetical data collected from trusted sources will be
analyzed using production optimization software tool, PROSPER and the end result will
be used to construct a work flow for the petroleum production system. The significance
of this analysis should be able to contribute to petroleum technologist and even top
management to see the important of thermal insulation towards having best flow
assurance strategies. On top of that, the industry will aware of its reliability and
feasibility while designing the flowlines and pipeline within the cost constrain.